Will's Turned Stones

Tag Archives: Italy

Rainbow weather this morning: the birds seem to sing more clearly in the rain.

When we were in Rome at the beginning of last month, Mrs T rejoiced to hear a cuckoo in the Botanical Gardens; I was uplifted by the sight and sound of a patrol of swifts, screaming along the Via Aurelia.

It was a month before I saw and heard the swifts in Canterbury, and only this morning, at six o’clock, did I hear the cuckoo. He may have been some distance away, as even with the back door open I could not hear him an hour and a half later.

But he was there, insistently, when the city was quiet. Perhaps he did not care to compete with the Cathedral’s great bell Dunstan, calling the faithful to prayer!